WiseGuys, WDMs, TCX and Thin Clients

Actually, it was really a Wyse guy (Mr. Steve Gold) who dropped by the office to show us the latest goodies offered by Wyse. There was a Gambino in the room but that was sheer coincidence. Two hours to get through the latest greatest ideas and innovations from Wyse. This could have been torturous! :)

Steve knows his stuff! We of course got to go over the various models that Wyse offers – Nothing too exciting there. Thin Clients that cover the spectrums of cost and performance. Not as stylish as the Panos but way more scalable, manageable and powerful than the other Thin Client vendors that have passed through our doors.

Next up was the WDM – Wyse’s Device Management console that can be used to manage all of these devices around your network. I really liked the WDM. The ability to reboot, flash, patch and update from a centralized console is a must for a large implementation. The interface was clean, thought out and easy to use. If you have a couple Wyse units, they offer a free less featured version of the WDM to try out. Download from their site here.

Wyse’s WSM was something I did not know about but was pleasantly surprised. WSM is a streaming appliance that can stream down full XP or Vista images to either Thin Clients or repurposed fat clients.

Personally, I was waiting for the TCX part of the session. The demos Steve ran really showed the difference that TCX makes in a Thin Client environment. The extensions really make the RDP protocol shine. In my opinion, you really cannot properly evaluate XenDesktop ICA with HDX to View unless you are also running View with TCX. Running View alone over RDP really exposed some weakness in the product. I was glad to hear that Wyse and VMware are in licensing agreements that will allow the TCX enhancements to be integrated into the View Client. This will definitely keep the VDI space on a more even playing field between vendors.